


Sic itur ad Astra

by Mereth



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, YOI Space Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-24 10:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13809606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mereth/pseuds/Mereth
Summary: Yuuri and Viktor. Two people from different corners of the universe. They shouldn't be able to meet. But both of them had the same goal: reach the stars and somehow in that journey they met each other.(Or a few connected drabbles from YoI Space Week)





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> This work is being done as I go (which is a first for me) so if you find any inconsistency or something confusing let me know. The same can be said about typos and grammar mistakes, I'll appreciate it.  
> As it isn't planned, rating may go up but it isn't a given.
> 
> The title (Sic Itur ad Astra) comes from Virgil's the Eneid and translated means something like thus one journeys to the stars. It seemed fitting.

_**Day One.** nebulae - vague, conceptual, dreamlike. full of potential and what might be, swirling with the hopes and dreams of stars yet to be born. _

* * *

 

It had been years, but Yuuri remembers the first time he had seen a nebulae. He had been 8 and bored out of his mind at school. He wasn’t a bad student, and he usually found his classes interesting, but that day the time had seemed to drag and not even Science, his favourite subject, had made it better, especially because they were on the History part of it. He just wanted to finish class and run to find Mari, who had promised to get him a holovid recording of last night’s skate.  He had wanted to watch it live, but not even being the first time Hasetsu had an athlete in the Olympics had been enough for his parents to let him be awake late. He was sure Yuuko had done great and he couldn’t wait to watch it. To witness how, for the first time, an inhabitant of Hasetsu space station was taking part and, he was sure, medaling in an Olympic competition. For once his little corner of the universe would be known aside from the few habited planets near them. And he knew that when he grew up he’d be their second Olympic athlete. He was good at skating; he could help make his people be known. He’d get that gold medal.

But all thoughts about the Olympics went out of his mind when the teacher made them turn to their next lesson. And there it was. An old picture on his screen full of colours: blue, black and red with shining points of gold around it, like the stars he had seen in old cartoons instead of the glowing suns he knew them to be; like the medals he had been dreaming about since he learnt Yuuko had classified for the Olympics.  
Yuuri drew a breath, surprised by how _breathtakingly beautiful_ it was; his eyes moving to the bottom of it where the legend explained its name.

_[Pillars of Creation.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation#/media/File:Eagle_nebula_pillars.jpg) _

_  
_ He started reading the text following the picture, trying to get as much information as he could. He remembered getting more and more fascinated as he learnt that it had been taken a lot time ago. That it was the most well-known picture among all the ones, 20th century Terrans had taken of nebulae. The birth of stars, the beginning of space.  He remembered his teacher’s voice explaining that the pictured had been taken by the Hubble telescope. A telescope so old Yuuri couldn’t figure out how that big and clunky thing had _worked,_ let alone make that wonderful picture he had on his screen. He had been fascinated by how they had reached up, how they seemed alive even if it was just dust and gases. It looked like something amazing was happening, and Yuuri, for the first time, thought that he wanted, no he _needed,_ to see something like that with his own eyes. To find what else was hidden in space. If 20 th Terrans had been able to find things as wonderful as that nebula with an old clunky telescope, what could be done now with their technology and spaceships? What was waiting for them out there?

That was the first day that Yuuri thought of space as a _place_ , a big place full of wonderful things he didn’t know about, instead of something that was just _there,_ like the oxygen he was breathing, like his family and the other people in the space station.

That was the first time, Yuuri thought of the stars as _a goal._


	2. Jumping Obstacles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Day Two at Stargazers  
>  _Day Two. stars - burning bright, beautiful, and bold. they are young, they are carefree, they burn and light up the night and bring warmth and life._

Viktor is 15 the first time he really sees the stars. He had seen them before of course: on textbooks, holovids and even in the simulations at the Academy’s planetary dome. But all of that pales next to the possibility of going outside and just _look._ No picture can compare to what the Russian teenager feels the first time he sets foot in the middle of the Siberian tundra and tilts his head. No knowledge about how Saint Petersburg’s lights hide the sky had prepared him for the sheer amount of lights on the dark sky above him or how his breath would catch, humbled for once.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” his best friend Chris muttered next to him,. The only two people outside trying to figure out the messages written in the stars above them. “They make nearly worthy freezing our asses out here.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come with me.” Viktor replied without looking at him, too charmed by the constellations to move his gaze. “You could have stayed inside with the rest of our classmates.”

The Swiss made a sound of agreement without turning his head.

“Not in the mood for drinking?” Viktor asked amused while trying to decipher the sky. He should have been able to recognize the constellations, but the angle was different to the ones in his star maps and it turned to be more complicated that he expected. He couldn’t turn the screen like he did on his computer or search for coordinates. He was the one who had to move and change to figure out the seemingly immutable stars.

“There you are.” He muttered between his teeth when he finally found the drawing of a house that made the constellation of Cepheus and, at its peak, the North Star.

“Not really. At least not when you are outside and I’m going to be the only underage drinker.” Chris replied absentminded. “What did you find?”

“Errai.” Victor moved his hand pointing to star. “Constellations here look different from textbooks, don’t they?”

Chris squinted a bit until he found where his friend was pointing.

“A bit. But up there it’ll be worse Vitya.”

“We’ll have maps and computers to show us the coordinates Chris. And other people.” Viktor shrugged. “Here it’s just us and the sky. I wonder how they managed to travelled in ancient times with just the stars to guide their journey.”

“We’ll figure out tomorrow, if Commander Baranovskaya doesn’t kill any of our classmates and makes us bury the body.” Chris made a face. “Drinking that vodka that smells like Sulphur when we have to hike tomorrow wasn’t their best idea.”

Viktor grunted in agreement. It was a well-known fact that Starfleet Commander Lilia Baranovskaya didn’t have any patience for anyone who wasted her time and didn’t suffer idiots. Being chosen among the Academy best students for the first screen to see if they’d be sent to Exploration or to any of the other Starfleet posts that had open internships wouldn’t save them from her wrath if they woke up hungover.

They didn’t spoke for a while except for a few words here and there when they managed to figure out a new constellation.

“You know, this is amazing, but as much as I like looking at them I can’t help thinking what’s out there” Chris said after a while. “How do they look? What can be found in space? I know we have seen pictures and had classes but if the stars here don’t look at all like the star charts we have, not even the old ones. Why should be space be different?”

“That’s why we’re going up there and discovering new things, Chris” Viktor replied, moving his head to look at his friend, his eyes bright with the same passion he had every time he talked about the space. “We’re going to travel among the stars and see what mysteries are still waiting for us. That much I can promise you.”

“It isn’t in your hands Vitya.” Chris replied moving his head down and kicking a pebble. “First we need to pass all the tests and convince Starfleet our age doesn’t mean we aren’t the best. Good marks won’t be enough.”

“We don’t have just good marks. We have the top positions over classmates older than us. Age is the only reason we aren’t already in a spaceship and you know it. But we’re here, doing survival training with the next promotion and still the youngest.”

“Do you think this time we’ll get the call?” Chris asked wistfully. “Will be being fifteen enough for them?”

“I think so.” Viktor muttered. “And if it isn’t, we’ll study more, finish other degrees, get more experience in the simulations and make them. They won’t be able to stop us when we reach seventeen.”

Viktor sounded determined, so much Chris knew then it was just going to happen. That they were going to travel to the stars.

(They didn’t have to wait that long. At sixteen they made History by being the youngest Terrans to intern into a spaceship. Viktor also made History as the first Terran to manage a double track degree before he reached twenty.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what we consider the Northern Star changes with the centuries. Now it's Polaris, but it's thought than in the future it'll be [Errai in the constellation of Cepheus](http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/star-errai-future-north-star)


	3. Homesick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Stargazer's Day 3.  
>  _Day Three. galaxies - communities of stars, drifting through the sky together. perhaps it is humbling to be part of something larger. perhaps it is lonely._

Yuuri had always been surrounded by people since he could remember. Finding a hiding spot to have a few minutes alone was nearly impossible in a place like the station he had born: one efficiently designed to have all the things its workers needed, in the smallest space possible. Extra room was a luxury; one Yuuri’s parents couldn’t afford. He had managed of course: an empty tube here, a small corner nobody paid attention to or his small room at his parent’s unit was always there waiting for him when the hustle and bustle of Hasetsu became too much. But he had longed for _space_ , for a bit of solitude without anyone poking their head to disturb the quiet.

(When he said he wanted to live in space. To travel and found what made stars, dust and all that surrounded them, people reminded him that he’d have to live even more cramped than in Hasetsu. Only Exploration starships reached where he wanted to go, and those weren’t luxury cruises, but small fast vessels. Yuuri didn’t care. He’d make all the sacrifices he had to reach the stars.)

But somewhere along the line, after leaving Hasetsu for Earth and the Starfleet Academy he had found himself missing living in cramped spaces full of people.  
At the beginning, Earth had been a luxury compared to his home: blue skies, trees and other living things he had never seen before and a lot of big empty places to find a quiet calm moment.  Even Starfleet Academy with all its busy students moving everywhere, trying to learn faster, to get better to get ready for the day they would travel to the stars had places where the stress seemed to disappear and he could relax.

Yuuri had looked around everything with eyes full of wonder, absorbing like a sponge all the knowledge he had around. Meeting and talking to people from different planets, stations and with lives he could had never imagine. (Phichit, his flatmate, was usually along with him. He had been born in one of colonies in Jupiter’s moons and knew enough of Earth to feel he could show Yuuri around)  
But after a while, the wonder had been lost, although not completely, and replaced by the weight of study and training and trying his best to pass all his subject and reach his goal as soon as possible. Yuuri’s plan was to compress all his studies in four years and finish before his 19th birthday. According to his mentor he’d had to work hard to keep up. It seemed coming from a tiny space station left him in disadvantage compared to all his classmates who had had access to simulations and star domes since their early teens. His mentor didn’t account for Yuuri’s stubborn streak and hard work. He’d do it.

It was in those moments, when stress piled up and his anxiety made him think the worst, that he missed his home the most. The blank noise from cramped Hasetsu station that helped him relax and that no crowd in the Academy had been able to replicate. His family and their support, Yuuko who had come back from the Olympics with a medal and now owned a skating rink in the planet closest to the station. All the people and things he had given up, temporally; only temporally, while he followed his path to the stars.

Phichit’s happy attitude had surprisingly become a good balm for his frazzled nerves during exams and helped calm his thoughts in the way only Hasetsu’s bustle had done before. But not even him could erase completely the loneliness that assaulted Yuuri when he had too much time and space and too little to fill it aside from his studies and training. But Phichit’s adventure and gossip wasn’t enough to fill the space.

(Until he reached Earth and got closer to his dream Yuuri had never thought you could feel lonely surrounded by a lot of people. Now he knew better)

He wanted the space outside the Terran atmosphere and the time to explore what made stars and planets; not the space of being planet bound and all the time left to wait until Starfleet deemed him ready to explore. He had time. The next internship for Exploration vessels wouldn’t open until a few weeks before his 19th birthday.

He’d be ready and then nothing would be on his way to explore the stars.


	4. To (boldy) go where no man has gone before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For YoI Stargazer's Day 4.  
>  _Day Four. the empty spaces in-between - cosmic latte or endless void, either way the emptiness is far more vast than the pinpricks that punctuate it. what drifts in the dark?_

Viktor looked through the window, staring at the empty space on the other side. The starship- _his_ starship- wasn’t moving so instead of the tiny white-ish pinpricks that signaled hyperspace travel he usually saw, there was only darkness. A vast dark void where nothing could be seen. Viktor sighed making a face. He had always wanted to travel through the stars, to command his own ship and lead his crew to unknown places in space. But what he hadn’t know was that, with that dream, came a lot of things he’d learn to endure but never like. It wasn’t the responsibility: he was captain he was responsible for his ship and his crew and he saw it as a duty and an honor. It was the endless bureaucracy; the hoops they had to jump through to get missions more complicated than everyday research.

Viktor knew those missions were important. But he had always wanted to _explore_ and that mean reaching for the unknown. He had always dreamt with stars and exploring, finding what was there and nobody had found yet. That was the main reason he had smashed through Starfleet Academy and his internship, brash and fast like a comet, breaking records and boundaries like it was a hobby: youngest intern (along with Chris) in an Exploration vessel, youngest Terran to have graduated in both Command and Science tracks, captain of his own ship at 24…all he had done had been with a goal in mind: to become a captain and travel through deep space to whatever laid on the other side.

People had always talked about how bold he was, knowing since he was a teenager with his first internship that he wanted to explore space. To go to the end of the known stars and keep going through the space nobody knew about (yet). _Spatium Incognito._

He just knew, _felt_ , that there was something out there he had to find. And he was decided to do it. He had recruited a crew with the same wish to see what was out there. People from every corner of the universe with good marks and experience and that something else nobody knew what to call.

People called it boldness, usually, or recklessness if you asked captain Feltsmann who had been his boss before he got to command his own ship. But it wasn’t that. At least not just that. All his crew from the lowest rank to the highest, from Engineering to Science to Command had the same drive: to find out what was there. He could see it in Phichit Chulanont’s eyes when something he had never heard before appeared in his communication console; he saw it in Chris’ expression while they charted the ship’s course glancing from the corner of their eyes to the areas of space labelled as ‘unexplored’; he felt in his Science officer expression of wonder every time he looked at simulations, the stars’ light reflected in his glasses.

  
They all had it and they had shown Command they were ready for it mission after mission. But Command hadn’t agreed, giving them more research or close exploration instead of what they yearned. Viktor sighed looking at the void, he had lost count of how many times he had looked at the seemingly empty space while waiting for the Command’s massage with their new mission. He had learnt after a while to not hope, to accept they weren’t going to deep space while sadness kept sneaking in. But he had promised himself this was the last one before asking for a reassignment.  
There were a limit to the number of times he could see his dream near his reach to have it stolen again. Perhaps he should try as a space pirate. At least there’d be less paperwork.

A ding at the door pulled him from his thoughts.

“Enter,” he said without turning. He figured it was Chris coming to drag him from his own head.

“Captain,” the shy voice made him turn and stop. There was his usually shy Science Officer, nearly jumping out of his skin and with the same expression he had when he looked at the stars.

“What is it Lieutenant Katsuki?”he asked. “And I have told you time after time that if I’m not on duty I’m Viktor.”

“We got the message from Command. I was the higher officer in the bridge and it got sent to me and I saw the requirements for the scientists under me…”

“Katsuki. Yuuri.” Viktor interrupted gently his officer’s babble, trying to not hope too much about the new mission. But if his normally unflappable officer was so excited..what if.. “What is it? Where are we going?”

“IOK-1, in the Coma Berenice constellation.” Yuuri smiled widely, his happiness so infectious Viktor could feel himself smiling. “It doesn’t have a common name.”

“Because nobody has been there before.” Viktor concluded. They had gotten it.  They were going into unknown space.

Viktor laughed happily and hugged Yuuri for a second before moving and trying to be professional again. His big heart-shaped smile and his officer’s blush the only proof of what had happened.

“Announce the good news to the crew. Wideship announcement.”

“Shouldn’t you do it?” Yuuri asked nervously. “You are the captain.”

“And you are my second and the one who got the message. You do the honors. You deserve it.”

For all answer Yuuri bowed his head nodding.

“Tell the alpha crew to join me in the command room. We are going to do a lot of work before our shift.”

Yuuri nodded, smiling before leaving. It’d be a lot of work but Viktor was sure nobody would mind. The stars waited for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IOK-1 exists and when it was discovered by Japanese astronomers in 2006 it was the oldest and farthest galaxy ever found.


	5. It's not the end (yet)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Day 5. Supernovae- oh, my dear, you know how to go out with a bang, don’t you? i promise you, your swan song will be seen across the ages.

Yuuri had thought this-the thing he had with Viktor that he didn't know how to label- would end quietly.

They worked together in a ship and, even though Viktor could be dramatic on his free time, when he was Captain Nikiforov he was professional and calm.

This may have been personal but it could affect the crew so Viktor controlled himself. Sort of. 

Probably that’s why when Yuuri said “let’s end this” Viktor’s reaction had been somewhere between a whimper and a bang. Viktor hadn’t said anything but he, the person Yuuri had always thought was larger than life, had sort of collapsed into himself. Like a massive old star before going supernova.

It was the most horrible thing he had witnessed (and he had seen a few. Exploring unknown corners of the galaxy brought beautiful things but also terrible ones and others that were both).

Viktor’s reaction was a silent explosion, like it had happened outside the ship where sound didn’t travel. His face crumbling and his eyes filling of tears until he hid his face between his hands without uttering a sound.

“Viktor…” Yuuri muttered walking close to him. “Are you ok?”

“No, I’m not.” Viktor replied showing his face; silent tears running down his cheeks. “I didn’t expect you to be so selfish Yuuri.”

“Selfish? For not wanting to continue this? It was just sex.”

“Selfish for not talking to me.” Yuuri could see Viktor was trying to control his temper. “Because we clearly were taking different things.from this relationship but never talked about it.”

“Relationship?” Yuuri asked confused.

“That’s what I thought.” Viktor laughed bitterly, chilling Yuuri to the bone.”That’s what I  _ hoped  _ would be a better description, I suppose.”

 

Yuuri didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t expected that and all the script he had in his head suddenly was useless. Nothing was according to plan (or any of the backup plans he had) and he didn’t know what to say.

Suddenly a siren blared through the ship breaking them from the verbal duel they had found themselves into. Yuuri saw Viktor close his eyes for a second, pulling himself together and moving from 'Viktor’ to 'Viktor Nikiforov, Captain of the USS Makkachin’

“Bridge, this is Nikiforov” Viktor asked moving to his room’s communicator. “Status”.

“There are strange readings on the radar. It seems it may be an unknown ship.”

Yuuri hold his breath. Nobody except them was supposed to be in that quadrant.

“I'm on my way.” He replied closing the communicator. Viktor-no the captain Yuuri corrected himself. Or perhaps not even that, there was a coldness in Viktor's gaze he had  never seen there-looked at him for a second before going to his door.

“We’ll talk later.” he said. “Go to your officers. We need to figure out what is happening.”

Yuuri nodded. There’d be time to talk later, when the crisis was averted

(what he couldn’t know was that it would last more and be more painful than expected, but then nobody ever expected disasters)


	6. The beginning is the end (is the beginning)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from a Smashing Pumpkins song. Also warning see the tags. I promise there'll be a happy ending
> 
> Day Six. black holes / dwarf stars - settle down into oblivion, whether it be a catastrophic fall or the long, slow way down. consume, or shine. either way, this is the end.

****

Viktor was aware; Yakov had made sure of that yelling at him every time he did something he considered harebrained, that everybody thought he would go with a bang in a storm of fire and reckleness. If anyone had thought of asking him, he’d have said that would be fine only if it was to save his crew –his people, his friends, his _family-_ but that he preferred to go at the end of a very long life surfing through space and searching for its wonders. Leaving a path to people to follow his-their, this was an effort done by all the people in his ship-, steps.

He had never thought it’d be something in between. Going down to save his ship and his crew, but mainly Yuuri. To let himself be taken into an unknown place to negotiate. To try to figure out what they wanted of each other. Making a stand but leaving quietly with a whimper. At least he met his end among the stars. That had been the only thing everyone-including fate-had agreed.

(They were peaceful, Viktor would think later, very much later. The main problem was their measure of _peaceful_ wasn’t a synonym of non-violent or _painless._ Neither did they measure pain in the same scale Viktor or any human would do)

They looked similar to them but at the same time not. They would never be mistaken with humans but only the more xenophobic among them would ever thought they weren’t intelligent. They weren’t charmed by Viktor’s smiles, Chris’ charisma or Phichit’s attempts to communicate in all the languages known in the Space Federation.

But they were impressed by Yuuri’s mathematical formula. Numbers crossing across their screen until they found a way to communicate with each other. To express they had trespassed but would be left alone.

For a price.

Viktor’s diplomatic or charming skills didn’t impress the people they had met-Viktor refused to call them _aliens._ They were the ones arriving in their home. If someone was an alien there it was them- but they were impressed when he volunteered, among protests, to go to their ship and finish negotiation.

Bravery or reckleness was appreciated. So was Yuuri’s loyalty, stubbornness, when he refused to stay behind. That’s why both had been taken to the ship where their command stood. Viktor can’t remember how long stayed while they sketch an agreement. They were to cross the system and leave them alone, just leaving the ways to communicate. To let them think if they wanted to search for them, for the stars or stay in their little corner in the universe even with the knowledge they weren’t alone.

It had all gone more or less smoothly or as smooth as it could go when you had to communicate through maths and screens and Viktor was starting to relax, thinking they were done and they’d go back to the Makkachin (and pick back his fight with Yuuri, he wasn’t looking forward to that) when their leader asked for a token of faith. A way to leave in good graces and see each other as tentative acquaintances.

Viktor agreed and volunteered without asking first what they wanted. It wouldn’t have mattered any way, he nodded in agreement when he learnt it was meant to be a combat, to bleed for their people in sacred ground so they could know Humans were honorable. Viktor saw Yuuri paled but agreed again on the condition the planet’s atmosphere was something he could breathe into.

 He was the captain if something had to happen to someone it was going to be to him. He’d fulfill his oath and his duty. Especially when the only other one who could volunteer was Yuuri. Viktor was dead set on never letting anything do conscious harm to Yuuri if he could avoid it. This was his job, not Yuuri’s.

In the end both beamed to their hosts’, the Valkist as they called themselves, planet. Their sacred arena a ring of very pale blueish sand surrounded by stands. It reminded Viktor of the coliseums Romans had built in Terra 3 millennia ago. There were no weapons, just their hands and their strength. Just Viktor and their most revered warrior priest. And Viktor learnt two things fast.  One was that Valkist must have a copper-based blood because its colour was greenish. The second was that they were stronger and they didn’t feel pain as much as he did.

He learnt another thing soon and it was that the fight wasn’t to first or second blood or even be thrown to the arena. It was until Death.  
He tried his best, he lasted as much as he could. He hoped it was enough or at least that he could have talked to Yuuri another time. But in the end it wasn’t enough and darkness took him like a black hole took everything around it. 


End file.
